Page 139 of Rescuing Ally: Part 2

Gabe follows but doesn’t sit. Just stands in the doorway like he’s afraid to contaminate the memory with his presence.

“I miss him too.”

“But I miss us too. The way we fit together. The way you used to look at me like I was something precious.” I meet his eyes across the room. “Now you look at me like I’m a problem you don’t know how to solve.”

“Because I don’t.” The admission costs him everything. “I don’t know how to be with you without him here to show me how. I don’t know how to touch you without feeling like I’m taking something that isn’t mine. I don’t know how to love you when half of what I loved about us is gone.”

The truth of it settles over us like a ghostly shroud. We sit in Hank’s house, surrounded by Hank’s things, trying to figure out how to be Ally and Gabe instead of two-thirds of something larger.

“Maybe we’re thinking about this wrong,” I say finally.

“How?”

“Maybe we’re not supposed to figure out how to be us without him. Maybe we’re supposed to figure out how to be something new. Something that honors what we had while accepting what we’ve lost.”

Gabe considers this, jaw working silently. Outside, the ocean crashes against the cliffs, eternal and indifferent to human grief.

“I’m scared,” he admits.

“Of what?”

“Of touching you and realizing it doesn’t feel the same. Of kissing you and tasting only loss instead of love. Of trying to make love to you and discovering that what I thought was desire was just proximity to him.”

The fear in his voice breaks something open in my chest. I’m afraid of the same things. Afraid that without Hank’s hands on my skin, Gabe’s touch will feel foreign. Afraid that without Hank’s voice murmuring encouragement, our intimacy will feel hollow.

“What if it is different?” Gabe takes a sip of his coffee.

“Then we figure out if different can still be good.” I cross the room to where he’s standing. “But we can’t figure that out by avoiding each other.”

“Ally—”

“No.” I reach for his hands, feel the tremor in them that speaks to fear and want and confusion all tangled together. “We’re going to spend the rest of our lives wondering if we could have made this work, or we’re going to find out.”

“What if?—”

“What if we honor him by refusing to let his death steal our chance at happiness?” I step closer, close enough to feel the heat radiating off his body. “What if we owe it to him—and to ourselves—to try?”

Gabe’s eyes search my face, looking for certainty I’m not sure I feel. But I know one thing for sure: this careful distance is killing us by degrees. Better to risk heartbreak than guarantee it through inaction.

“I don’t know how to do this without him,” he whispers.

“Neither do I. So we learn. Together.”

I rise on my toes, press my lips to his in the softest possible kiss. A question more than a statement. A request for permission to try.

He freezes for a heartbeat. Then his hands come up to frame my face, thumb tracing the line of my cheek with the reverence I remember from before. Before grief. Before loss. Before everything got complicated.

I close my eyes and let his warmth seep into my bones, let his heartbeat remind me that life continues even when it feels impossible. Tomorrow we’ll figure out how to live without Hank. Tomorrow we’ll start the long process of healing.

Tonight, we hold each other and remember that love doesn’t end with death—it just learns to exist in a different shape.

It’s not the future we imagined. But it’s the one we have.

“It feels wrong,” he breathes against my mouth.

“I know.”

“Like we’re betraying him.”